If you lived in New York City in 2004, you might remember the story of two the city’s most famous birds. (Perhaps even more famous than Flaco the Owl, who busted out of Central Park Zoo a couple years back, and the Hot Duck, aka Mandarin Patinkin, who mysteriously popped up among the other mallards in the Central Park lake in 2018.) Pale Male and Lola were red-tailed hawks who’d taken up residence atop a swanky Fifth Avenue co-op, much to the dismay of some of the residents; they objected to the bird poop, or bits of leftover food (i.e., pigeon and rat bits), that the hawks periodically dropped. The eviction was major news; one of their most vocal supporters was animal advocate Mary Tyler Moore, who lived in the building. The co-op later relented and built the feathered friends a sort of steel nest, but ornithologists believe the lovebirds never reproduced…at least not together.
It’s a great story—one that, for some reason, lives on the outskirts of Robin Rice’s scattershot play Pecking Order, now at 59E59 through Feb. 15. Rather, the disorganized drama zooms in on a bird-watching doorman, Albert (Robert Lee Taylor, new to the production and performing script-in-hand the night I attended), who’s biding his time hailing cabs and taking packages for ultrawealthy Upper East Siders until he can land a gig at a nature nonprofit. Inexplicably, he turns to a Post-reading, dumb-as-rocks fellow doorman (Nathan James Reilly)—two doormen for a building with about a dozen units?—for charisma lessons, in hopes of drumming up tips, as he needs extra cash to pay for an operation for his ailing sister, Rosa (Heather Abrado). When Albert isn’t gazing admiringly at Lola and Pale Male through his trusty binoculars, he’s mooning over May (Joy Marr), a bird-like woman—or woman-like bird—who falls seemingly from the sky into his co-op’s well-manicured landscaping. Birdwoman even manages to make it up to the Bronx to tend to Rosa: Did she have directions? Did she have a key to the apartment? Am I overanalyzing this outlandish plot point?
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★☆☆☆☆ review here.]
Rice also devotes a baffling amount of time to one of the residents, Sorrell Soffit (Caroline Portante), a spoiled 21-year-old TikTok makeup influencer who makes it her mission to bring down the birds in a desperate attempt to win her daddy’s attention (daddy owns the building). Sorrell’s chief foe: Broadway legend Bootsie Chestnut (Laura Lee Botsacos), a nature lover who’s hiding a big secret about Sorrell’s past.
If you’re overwhelmed, you’re not the only one. It would be one thing if this were an Only Murders in the Building–style series about an uptown co-op, its quirky denizens, and a high-profile hawk problem. But it’s way too much for a 90-minute play in 59E59’s teeny-tiny Theater C. In Upper East Side terms, it’s like trying to squeeze the contents of a Louis Vuitton Neverfull into a Fendi baguette.
Pecking Order opened Feb. 2, 2025, at 59E59 and runs through Feb. 15. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
